DealZone

Deutsche Bank analyst Paul Sankey says the U.S. oil major may overshoot its $10 billion target for asset sale by 50 percent. He reinstated coverage of ConocoPhillips with a “buy” rating, crediting the rising premiums the company has been able to command. So far, Conoco has raised more than $5 billion from the sale of stakes in its Canadian oil sands venture, Syncrude, to China’s Sinopec and the stake in a truck stop joint venture to Pilot Travel Centers.

Sankey expects about $1.5 billion to $2 billion from Conoco’s North American assets, including $1 billion from its 25 percent interest in the Rockies Express pipeline. This would bring the total asset sale proceeds to about $7 billion this year — well ahead of the company’s target of $5 billion, he said.

Conoco has been selling to cut its spiraling debt. That may not be as dramatic an incentive as what is going on in the Gulf, but could mean BP may tap into the same demand for oil and gas assets to pay for its clean-up efforts. If you believe the forward price curve for oil, buying assets now may be the best chance to prepare for the coming price increases.

Certainly the price action is pointing towards increasingly juicy premiums. News today that Total has agreed to buy UTS Energy for $1.42 billion in cash, twice the amount the French oil major offered for the Canadian oil sands developer 18 months ago, should be encouraging for other sellers.

It's a puzzle M&A bankers and corporate executives have been trying to solve for years: how far from your home market can an acquisition take place and ultimately stumble over cultural differences? It's a question that looms large as quintessentially Italian automaker Fiat prepares to swallow up Chrysler -- inventor of the K-car and the minivan -- and which reportedly haunts St Louis-based employees of Anheuser Busch in the aftermath of their company's takeover by the penny pinching Belgians and Brazilians at InBev.

Gary Katz, CEO of Deutsche Boerse unit International Securities Exchange, insisted during his appearance at the Reuters Exchanges and Trading Summit that all has been sweetness and light since the Germans assumed control of the upstart American options exchange and that there has been "nearly zero turnover" since the takeover.

But Thomas Kloet, Chief Executive of Canadian exchange powerhouse TMX, was one of several executives at the summit who insisted that cross border mergers can often be a recipe for disaster and that the ideal mergers are "domestic roll-ups" like CME Group's takeover of Nymex and the Chicago Board of Trade or indeed TSX Group's takeover of the Montreal Exchange, which created TMX.